The present invention generally relates to patent case management and docketing.
There exist many systems and methods for managing intellectual property data. For example, USPA Pub. No. 2005/0210009 to Tran discloses systems and methods for providing an electronic file for intellectual property applications by receiving electronic file wrapper information from a patent office; and generating a single electronic document for an entry in the electronic file wrapper information, the document having all images for the entry consolidated therein.
The current state-of-the-art for patent case management and docketing fails to realize the full potential of Private PAIR and the XML data that is made available by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) to patent practitioners for download.
Current practices primarily rely on the physical docketing of USPTO correspondence that is received by practitioners via the U.S. Post Office. Typically, one or more docket clerks open and review the USPTO correspondence, and then make manual data entries in a docket program for creating and tracking deadlines that may be associated with the USPTO correspondence. Sometimes this function is outsourced to a third party service provider.
At single-practitioner firms and some smaller firms, the manual data entry may be performed by the practitioner himself or herself. Moreover, the data may not even be entered into a docketing program, but instead in a general purpose calendar program or spreadsheet that is not specifically designed to address any particular patent case management and patent docketing needs.
The manual data entry that is performed in these conventional practices is generally duplicative of the data entry that has already been performed by the USPTO. In this regard, application data, including USPTO correspondence data, is already maintained in electronic form by the USPTO and access to this data, via XML file downloads, is provided to patent practitioners by the USPTO in Private PAIR.
Accordingly, a need exists for improvement in patent case management and docketing and, specifically, a need exists for making use of the XML data that is provided by the USPTO to patent practitioners in patent case management and docketing. This, and other needs, are addressed by one or more embodiments of the invention.